Nice bit of kit despite some minor annoyances. I miss Swype for the keyboard, for example. The kid next to me has been showing his grandmother how to use it for reading eBooks, and they can't seem to make the fonts big enough for her to read comfortably. But this isn't the place for a technology rant.

Back in the vastness of Bangkok, I was chatting with a chap in a purple Buddhist robe who turned out to be from Texas, but has been living in Burma (isn't that Myanmar now?) for the last nine years and is flying home to see his parents for the first time in tearly a decade.

The woman sitting next to me on thpe plane is a school teacher from Sydney, flying home from England where her husband was playing cricket, and their daughter lives. We comparg the Irish and Australian education systems. They seem to have a lot in common, probably because they were both set up by the British.

I was nearly having to cancel my weekend away, as we have a system going live in work. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but the other two people who could support it had already booked time off, so that left only me. This would be a major pain, since I already had flights booked, but I guess at least partly mr own fault for not booking the time off far enough in advance.

This would be particularly annoying since chances are nothing would happen at all.

However, I was granted a respite, not because of any pity for me, but because the powers that be don't want to pay for a load of people on weekend overtime. So they've moved it forward to Thursday night, which allows me to depart on Friday.

But now I'm seriously considering spending Thursday night in the office. I'm going out for a few drinks after work anyway, and if I stayed out till ten or eleven, it would be 12.30 to 1:30 before I get home. If anything did happen, the only was back into the office would be to get a taxi, which would take another hour or so, which might not leave enough time to fix it and make my 6:45am flight. And nothing goes wrong i'd still have to leave Drogheda before 5am to get to the airport (and disturb the sleep of a kindly soul for a lift).

The alternative of coming back to the office where I can keep an eye on the system, and maybe catch a couple of hours sleep if things are quiet. That way if there was a problem, I'm on hand to deploy a quick fix. All being well, I can get the airport express bus and be out to the airport in 30 minutes or less.

I shall pack tonight anyway, and may well take my weekend bag with me in the morning.